How will you maintain confidentiality?

We are committed to protect your privacy. Your identity will be kept as confidential as possible. Except as required by law, you will not be identified by name or by any other direct personal identifier.

To protect your privacy we will use a random code number instead of your name on all your data collected, analyzed, aggregated and released to researchers. Information about the code will be kept in a secure system. Researchers will have access to all the data collected in the study, but will be unable to easily map any particular data to the identities of the participants.

The results of this research study may be presented at scientific or medical meetings or published in scientific journals. However, your identity will not be disclosed.

This study anticipates that your de-identified data will be placed in a “repository” – a secure online database – where approved qualified researchers can access it. Your data will be included into large, computational studies related to general health and wellness. There is always a risk that the database can be breached by hackers, or that experts in re-identification may attempt to reverse our processes. Total confidentiality cannot be guaranteed.